Templo Mayor and a final drink at Centenário 107

We've arranged for Señor Cristobal to take us downtown to the Templo Mayor - the fairly recent excavation of an Azctec temple which was discovered less than 30 years ago. It has an outside, in part still on-going part, and a beautifully arranged museum behind it. In order to get to there we have to cross the Zócalo, the huge square in front of the Palácio Nacional. Once again a political rally being prepared and we have to make our way past the barricades, observing the growing crowds getting yellow and white banners, caps and t-shirts for which they stand in long twirling lines.

It's a pleasure to see the organization of the museum, which takes you slowly through their preciosities, such as a 'box offering'

and a statue of an eagle

both found beneath the streets of the city.
When we get out on a side street we have fun looking through some army surplus stores, but when we turn the corner to the main square the crowd has grown so much it's hard to move and it's full of police in full riot gear. We step into the Sagrario, a beautiful old church next to the catedral, which leans like the Tower of Pisa, since the foundations are slowly sinking into the ground,

but we're anxious to get away from the crowd and move across to the Francisco I. Madero street which will take us up to the Museu de las Bellas Artes. There's a lot of noise, people are excited, end they h are swinging banners and chanting slogans. We finally reach the Bellas Artes with huge Botero sculptures dotted in front and enter the building, which is an art-deco gem. The collections turn out to be closed, but we can see the huge (highly political) murals by Diego Rivera, Siqueiros, Tamayo, and others. Unfortunately, we're not allowed to take any photos. When we get out, the traffic is practically stopped and we find a subway stop and get back to calm Coyoacán, reasonably fast, if on a hot and airless ride. We must have gotten out on the wrong side, because suddenly we're quite lost, have no idea where our street is, and end up taking a cab home - where we immediately take off our shoes and sit on the bed. Ahhhhh. When we feel more rested and cooler, we walk over to Centenário 107

where we have nibbles and Mojitos - not feeling up for a full lunch. Then we walk home to Chalêt de Carmen on Vicente Guerrero to pack. The car will pick us up at 9am tomorrow and drop us at the airport.

We know we'll have to come back again. We've seen a lot, but still only a mere fraction of what there is. Hasta la vista!
Here are the last pictures:

Teotihuacán and (much later) mescal

We are woken by the strident alarm at 5am - when Oswaldo groggily realizes he's set it to Brazilian time. But at 7 we get up to get ready for Señor Cristobal, the cab-driver, who will take us out to the Teotichuacán ruins an hour and a half northeast out of the city. We've been warned to slather ourselves with sunscreen, wear hats and carry water - all of which we do. We get there early, before the crowds and make our way down the Calzada de los Muertes - dribbling several salesmen, who offer blankets, stone masks, axes, tablecloths, silver, and when we politely decline they all ask to trade their goods for the black nylon backback Oswaldo is carrying!

We climb up the stairs to many rampants and the down on the other side, which in itself is quite tiring, but the enormous pyramid of the Sun is getting closer and we discuss nervously whether we'll even attempt scaling its steep and narrow steps.

In the end, after vigorous stretching, we do climb it of course (when in Rome...) and are quite proud and not really so winded when at last we stand on the top. The view is spectacular with a fresh breeze cooling our hot faces and backs. 

The descent is much less strenuous and we notice that the tour crowds have begun to arrive and are huffing and puffing up the stairs we just mastered. Once down we continue along the calzada in the direction of the imposing Moon pyramid. In front of it is the large flat platform where they did their human offerings. This was a violent culture indeed. I try the stairs to the Moon pyramid, observed by Oswaldo who has decided it's not for him, and I too give up a short way up. Then we walk back towards the entrance, I'm now holding an umbrella the sun is that strong, and find a pleasant upstairs café where we have the breakfast we didn't have time for this morning. We're hot and exhausted and happy to sit in the air-conditioning. After a visit to the local museum 

it's back into the car, and after a short stop at the airport to change money (again!) I get dropped at the Mercado de Coyoacán to indulge in some shopping, while Oswaldo goes home. Much later we're ready to go out and have a very late lunch. We walk down to the Jardin del Centenario and try a new Mexican restaurant, Los Danzantes. The guidebook says it's famous also for doing mescal tasting, so we decide to try.

It's a serious business, we have to try 3 different bottles and after each sip dip orange slices in a red spice and eat it all. It doesn't take long to realize all this is REALLY strong, so we eventually decide on a drink 'Cielo Azul' made with mescal, lemonjuice and curação, which seems like a safer choice. We have a wonderful meal with red snapper and 2 desserts, a tart made with fresh little black figs with their peel on and pancakes filled with apple and covered with a light caramel sauce - served with ice-cream. Yum.

Click on the picture here if you want to see more photos from the day:

Xochimilco and San Ángel

We've decided to take a trip to the Xochimilco canals and have arranged for a driver to pick us up after our usual breakfast at the organic place. The weather has gotten sunnier, but it is still a little nippy when we get to the canal area after about 30 minutes of driving in murderous traffic through unattrative urban areas. When we finally reach the quay, the colorful boats are moored in several rows, one next to the other, on the narrow canal

and we pick one offered by a jeans-clad youth with uneven teeth. A price is agreed upon: ap. $44 for 2 hours, the two of us alone on a boat for 8. The cab-driver will wait for our return. The boy calmly punts the boat through the throng of barges and we start our circuit of the canals, which at first are polluted and lined with makeshift buldings guarded by unhappy tethered dogs. When the canals open into a quiet Monet-like landscape, we are startled by the appearance of a carpet salesman on a canoe,

but once free of him we can enjoy the light splash when the pole goes in, the swooping birds,  the vegetation reflected in the still water. It is quite lovely - and also quite amazing that such tranquility can exist behind the crowded highways. We punt along an ecological reserve where we come upon 'free pigs' foraging in the fields and observe a number of them sleeping peacefully in a shady spot under the trees.

After discussing the limited possibilites open to us due to the fact that all museums are closed on Mondays in Mexico, we ask the driver to take us to San Ángel, a colonial town described as similar to our own Coyoacán. Sán Angel turns out to be a huge urban area, again with a lot of traffic, where the driver only after much insistence on our part drops us in the Plaza San Jacinto, which is indeed surrounded by pretty colonial buildings and exudes the air of a provincial town from another era.

We start looking for a restaurant and many recommend the San Ángel Inn, which the first person informs us lies 5-10 minutes away. We wander uphill on cobblestones past very fancy and beautiful houses with much security - and no restaurant. We then ask some passing ladies who exclaim how wonderful this restaurant is and swear it lies 5-10 minutes away. We're tired now and wonder whether this description is just a manner of speaking for Mexicans. This is confirmed when another guy - 5-10 minutes away - says it lies: 5-10 minutes away. We're hot and crabby and go into the first restaurant we see, La Bueno Fé, which turns out to be less than great. We also later learn that the San Angel Inn is indeed fabulous and also located in front of Diego Rivera's house. Well, in travel as in life you win some and you lose some. Speaking of losing, when we much later - having suffered in a bank for maybe 30 minutes to change $300 - take a cab to go home, I realize I have lost my (prescription) Ray-Bans. Fortunately Mexican cab drivers are inordinately polite and this one drives us up and down until we find the glasses at the restaurant.
Click on this picture to see the photos:

Sunday in Coyoacán

Although we wake up early we linger in bed, our bodies still wan after yesterday's huge walk. Around 9 we manage enough energy to shower and call Abel for a walk down Centenario in search of breakfast. We find a quaint organic bakery with tables on the sidewalk and with young hippie-type women serving biskets (robust whole-wheat buns) with butter and jam, along with such coffee choices as cappuccino with soy milk.  

As we have now gotten to expect several people asking for money trail past our seats, children, old ladies, a blind man with a lovely patient Labrador. (When I later take a picture of the dog I have to catch myself wanting the show the owner the picture – whoops!)

It’s become quite sunny and Oswaldo and I head towards the street fairs on Jardín del Centenario, but it turns out to be too early, people are still setting up for the big family Sunday. We continue on to the Mercado de Coyoacán, where I decide to squeeze into a tight dress inside an airless stall. That brings on my first feeling of being at a high altitude and I am reminded of Bhutan and my shortness of breath and fatigue there. But a bottle of water settles things and we walk on to the Trotsky residence located not far from the Frida Kahlo house. He too lived in a lovely quinta surrounding a shaded garden,

although in this house you really feel the tragic destiny of this man, bludgeoned to death right here in spite of being surrounded by guards. You can see one of the guard towers in the picture above. His whole family died violent deaths back home while he was in exile and it is sad to contemplate their pictures on the walls. We eventually leave and head towards the Viveiros de Coyoacán, which from the outside looks like a lush Jardim Botanico. It turns out to be not so, rather a drier bosque, which serves as a family outing and jogging area, where a lot of squirrels seem to feel quite safe. The sun is high by now and we head home for a short break - and to take off our shoes, ahhhh.

Later we revive to head back to the Jardín, where Oswaldo knows of an excellent Italian restaurant, the Ave Maria, where we sit in the deep shade of a varanda, watching the area, which by now has become quite crowded by local people enjoying the day off with their families and dates. A lot of them are quite robust and eating tostadas and enchiladas off styrofoam trays. 

Our thoughts go to the Huntsman family, important donors to the Univeristy of Pennsylvania, whose fortune was made in chemical products, which included....styrofoam trays. Meanwhile we've gotten going on a big jar of Clericot, chopped up fruit in some sort of juice topped up with a whole bottle of red wine, while we wait for Abel. When he arrives we proceed to have a lovely meal - I eat angel hair pasta, alio-olio, cooked with big shrimp, mushrooms and artichokes, and Oswaldo has Jumbo shrimp flambéed with Tequila. We have plans for market browsing when we leave, but big raindrops start falling and we hurry home through the increasing rain - to a big nap, as it turns out.

https://picasaweb.google.com/108088723826036223432/SundayInCoyoacan

City Tour

It's raining when we wake up and we linger in bed unwilling to face a brisk walk in search of breakfast. When we make it outside, it turns out others thought the same and most cafés are closed. We finally find the pasticeria from yesterday and gorge on filled croissants and coffee, then hurry home to the waiting Abel and the cab.  It's a 20 minutes ride to the very impressive Museu de Antropología,

where Viviane, one of Abel's doctoral candidates, is waiting. We take in most of the huge collection, divided into the many cultures that comprise Mexican history. With a final look at a temporary jade collection we head outside in the now sunny and hot weather and begin, what is announced as a longish walk down past hotels, offices, mouments and many, many Starbucks on the Paseo de la Reforma. At one point we have to sit and eat freshly cut mango sold by a street vendor - to get our strength back. After about 2 1/2 hours we reach the beginning of the Centro Historico, where the crowds are becoming much more noticeable.

After a stop at an Italian restaurant, where we gorge on huge desserts of bread pudding and pannacotta - after all we did walk all that way - we continue on in the direction of the Palacio Nacional. On the way there's an onslaught of impressions, old buildings mixed with new, music pouring out from the stores, street vendors and the ubiqutous Mexican young women swaying along on high-heeled boots and wearing a lot of eye make-up. 

There a festive air and maybe it's due to the political event which has filled the - Vivi informs me - 2nd largest main square in the world (after Moscow) with supporters of a political party, but also by black clad youngsters with gelled hair waiting in a never ending line to get into the ensuing rock concert. Abel wants us to see the Templo Mayor, towards which we struggle through the crowd, but it's gotten late and we're too tired to do the monument justice. Instead we watch a group of Indians dance

in front of the cathedral - Abel says it's a political act also since the cathedral was built on their land - and then we dive into the Metro, led by Vivi, who is from the Brazilian south, but has lived in Mexico City for two years. In the Metro there's a changing army of singers, hawkers, small children with paper cups, guys selling cd's with loud music collections - all asking for money, but it gets us quickly to Coyoacán, where we wander back to our hotel through suddenly quiet empty streets. We cannot wait to get our shoes off, but it has been an amazing day filled with new impressions. Here are some pictures: https://picasaweb.google.com/108088723826036223432/CityTour

First Impressions

I arrive at the modern airport from Rio de Janeiro via Houston, having sat during the last leg on a single seat towards the front in a Brazilian Embraer place, while one of those United flight attendants barked at us - the way they do. There's a long walk for the exhausted traveler to the passport control, where it turns out the flight attendant mentioned did not give me ALL the forms, so off to the side to fill out the rest. I pass and so does my luggage which has to be lugged on to a belt and x-rayed. Outside waits Oswaldo with a generous philosopher, Max, who's driven him out to pick me up. We're dropped at a yellow house in a quiet neighborhood, Coyoacán, with tree-lined roads where birds sing. A spacious room overlooking more trees awaits. After a little nap we head out to find Tripadvisor recommended Tostadas in the Coyoacán Mercado, not so far from here. I have my tostada piled high with a savory mix of mushrooms, avocado and onions and get a tamarind juice to go with it. It's unbelievably good. Oswaldo gets s shrimp mixture with tiny pink fresh shrimp and a tangerine juice. We sit on red plastic stools at a gaily decorated counter in the middle of a noisy market where they sell everything.

I'm already in love with the embroidery and the color that I see everywhere and stop to sniff fruits and vegetables I have never seen before. Would be fun to cook here.

We walk down the Xicoténcatl (a lot of street names are like that, hard to pronounce and to remember) avenue, where, Oswaldo instructs me, you must leap and dodge cars when crossing the side streets, and check the many cute little stores lining it (more embroideries!), then finally walk to to Frida Kahlo house, a beautiful blue compound of house built on several levels around a sculpture courtyard.

The use of color and form so freely is very exciting and I regret not having paid closer attention to the first part of The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, which describes living there. The book did not turn me on - maybe now it would, given we're also going to see the Trosky house, and he was also in the book.
We return to the hotel to rest for a a bit and a torrential rain starts. When it doesn't look like stopping we head out with our rain gear to a merry place, Century 107, Oswaldo has found nearby, full of young people and music, where we have Margaritas and Mojitos and munch on guacamole with corn-chips, both homemade, and finally give in to a crispy pizza. Then back to bed.